


Melinoë

by the_alchemist



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pregnancy, surprisingly happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28180152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: Getting pregnant is a bad idea when you can't give up the drink. Getting pregnant by Hades is a bad idea full stop. Persephone is in trouble …
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Melinoë

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



> Thanks to beta reader Z, who fixed a great deal.
> 
> Content notes: includes allusions to spousal abuse, abortion (including coerced abortion), and alcoholism (including drinking while pregnant)

**Melinoë (goddess of ghosts)**

The first thing I remember is my own conception. I wasn't, and then all at once, I was. They – Ma and Pa – were lying down on the banks of the Cocytus, and Ma was drinking and Pa was looking sternly at the shades who hang about on the steamboats weeping and wailing, and he was thinking wouldn't it be better if they did something productive – but somehow one thing led to another and then suddenly I _was_.

It was a shock, I can tell you. A good one, mostly – even a murmur of life is a wonderful thing. Though sometimes I think that if it hadn't been for them yelling shades doing their lamentations and stuff then I might have got to be goddess of something better. But that's beside the point. Pa – and Pa _is_ my Pa, no matter what he might have put about later – put his thing in her thing and suddenly there was me, all coiled and curled like a tiny fern in her belly.

I think she knew at once, but she didn't say anything, just grabbed the bottle and took another swig (which made me sick even though I liked how it tasted). He _didn't_ know. He pulled her to him and smelled her hair (which still had the memory of flowers in it, because she hadn't long been back) and he said I love you, and he _thought_ she said 'I love you too', but he was wrong. What she said was 'I love you two.'

**Persephone (goddess of fertility)**

I knew for months before I knew. When I _knew_ , I also knew two other things: that I had to stop drinking and that I had to tell him. So I poured myself one last glass – because one more wouldn't do any harm – and drank it, and went up to the penthouse.

The trouble was, he was already asleep. You wouldn't believe it, but he looks so innocent when he is asleep. He doesn't sleep enough. He works too hard, and that's what makes him grumpy. It would have been wrong to wake him, so I didn't. Instead I took one last swig, then curled myself around him.

There is no night or day in our realm, but it was at the darkest time that I jerked awake. He didn't shout, or yell. He _screamed_ , and all of the Underworld shook with it. And oh, how I tried to make my little body big enough to encompass all of him, to make him know he was safe and warm and loved. 'Hades, husband. It's all right. It's all right. I'm here. Nothing can hurt you.'

He curled into me. My breasts were already swelling, and he hid his face between them as I told him. 'It's nothing, love. It's only a bad dream. Wake up. I'm here.'

He shrank back. Not just from _it_ – whatever it was – but from me, because I'd seen him in his weakness.

**Melinoë (goddess of nightmares)**

Did I do it to him, or did he do it to me? Did his nightmare make me what I am, or did I have my powers even then? Could such a tiny scrap of divinity as I was have disturbed him so as to make his whole realm shake?

Here's what happened.

Sitting in my Ma's belly was boring. The liquor made me ill and slow and stupid, and the view was non-existent. So I decided to go for a wander around my Pa's mind instead.

There was a whole lot of sensible grown-up stuff there. Bills and invoices and contracts and all that. I was impressed, but not interested, so I dug deeper. Below that, there were all his feelings about my Ma, which made me go all warm and glowy, and his feelings about his brothers and sisters and their other kids, which were as incomprehensibly complicated as the bills and invoices, only much more interesting. So I lingered there for a bit and tried to make head or tail of it, and didn't really mind even when I couldn't, because I already knew I was immortal, and I'd have all the time there was to figure it out.

And then there was this trapdoor, and it was all neatly labelled and everything, and it said 'Pa'. And I thought that's handy, because I know he's my Pa but I don't even really know what a Pa is, and if I could only get the locks off, then I could find out.

Well, it took a while, but I could, and I did.

And then I was inside again – not in my Ma's belly, where I was warm and loved and mostly safe – but in a cold and stinking parody of it, where all I could feel was hate, hate, hate. And, oh, how I screamed then. I screamed and screamed and screamed for Ma and Pa to come for me, to bring me back.

**Persephone (goddess of grain)**

I flipped over another pancake and slid it onto the serving plate. 'All I'm saying is that I love you, and it might do you good to talk about … whatever it is.'

He grunted. 'Sit and eat,' he said.

I sat beside him. 'It's not like anyone would believe me even if I did blab your secrets. You're king of a third of everything there ever is or was, and I'm barely more than a nymph without you.' The maple syrup was nearly gone, so I used whiskey instead. It doesn't count when it's part of food.

'It's no secret.' He stabbed the pancake with his fork. 'When I was a kid, my Pa ate me. Everyone knows that.'

I chewed in silence for a few moments. ' _Ate_ you?' I said. 'Is that one of your sex metaphors, like when I told Mama that cos I'd swallowed your seed we were married now, and you cut in and said I was talking about pomegranates?'

'No.'

'Oh.'

The whiskey just made the pancakes soggy, so I gave up and ate them plain, pouring the whiskey into my glass instead.

'Pa ate me.' He shrugged. 'My sisters, then me, then Poseidon. He'd killed his own Pa, and there was a curse that his own kids would do likewise. So he ate us. And I tell you that there is no-one – titan, god or mortal – whom I would sentence to a punishment half so terrible as sitting in his guts for a decade or three.'

I decided he probably wasn't joking. 'I'm so sorry,' I said.

'Yeah. Titan shit stinks worse than you can imagine. And I had a bad dream about it. That's all.'

'But you are better than him. You have learned mercy.' You will be a _good_ father.

'Maybe.' He pushed his plate away.

I should have told him then. If I'd told him then, perhaps everything would have been different.

'Maybe,' he said again. 'I just thank the fucking Fates for picking me over my brothers to gift with something like fidelity … and with a wife whose womb would pickle any creature mad enough to creep into it.'

He folded me tenderly in his arms, his hands against my belly.

Shit.

**Melinoë (goddess of madness)**

I screamed and screamed and kept screaming. Titan shit stinks worse than you could imagine. I was trapped. And when I couldn't scream any more, then I started kicking. I knew it was hopeless, but I would not end quietly, and so I threw myself against the fleshy walls of my prison, biting, and punching and kicking some more.

**Persephone (goddess of death)**

I saw at once he'd felt her kicking. He drew back and stared at me. Then: 'You'll have to get rid of it.'

'No.'

'You _will_ get rid of it.'

'No.'

'There are ways. Even for a goddess. We're not immortal 'til we're born. There are gentle ways. Apollo and Asclepius know them.'

'I know that. I ain't stupid. Mama says it's like pruning the vine. Sometimes you gotta take off the weak branches when they're little so there's room for the strong ones to flourish. But our little girl ain't no weak branch. And anyway, where'll she go when she's dead? We can take her in as our daughter, or we can take her in as a shade. She'll still be ours.'

'My kind … do not make good fathers. My Pa was wicked, my grandpa worse. I will not be like them. I will _not._ ' He slammed his fist down onto the table.

'Then don't. Be a good Pa. Hell – be an absent Pa if you don't care for her. But you _are_ her Pa.'

I didn't even notice I was filling up the glass again until he drew back from me and sneered. 'That's the way. Who needs Apollo and his herbs; Hecate and her incantations? Poison it. Drown it in whiskey and worse.'

I hurled the glass at his face, took the bottle by its neck and went for him.

He didn't mean to push me. He only held out his arms to protect himself. I know that. I know it deep in my soul. And I knew it at once, as I was tumbling backwards down the stairs; knew it as I crumpled to the floor; knew it as my belly cramped and I cried out to Artemis and Hecate all who care for women when our time is come.

**Melinoë (goddess of propitiation)**

I hung on. It was too soon, and I ain't no weak branch. _I_ prayed to Hecate as well, and I said I would put on her saffron robe and be her acolyte and serve her all the days of my immortal life.

**Persephone (goddess of spring)**

I slept. Deep beneath the blankets of our marriage bed, I slept. He told me afterwards there were nightmares, that I cried out, but I don't remember that.

I awoke when the pains came again, and cried out for my Mama in this place she could never come. He cradled me, my back against his broad chest, his hands on my belly. 'Come back to me, my love,' he said. 'I am lost without you. I am sorry, so sorry …'

My body told me what to do: when to strain and when to relax. But still it hurt. We can't die, but sometimes what we go through is worse than death. Hadestown ain't no place to have a baby. From how much it hurt, I thought she'd be a big one, but what finally slithered out was tiny: palish yellow, the colour of quince, wrinkled, bloody. And motionless.

'Dead,' I said.

She fitted easily in one of his palms, as he dutifully blew in her nostrils then turned her over and patted her little back with his finger. Nothing.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'It's my fault. I shouldn't have pushed you.'

I shook my head. 'Everyone knows that she who is with child must abstain from strong drink.'

He reached out to me, and I pressed myself against him, and we wept, as we cradled in our arms the hope we'd ruined.

I noticed he was naked. I'd never seen him naked before. My fingers traced the scars on his arms and back. _Pa ate me_. It could have been worse, I supposed.

I wiped some ichor from her yellow lumpy little face. 'Melinoë,' I said. At least she would have a name.

Perhaps she was better off dead.

'I need a drink.'

She turned her eyes to me then, and _yelled_.

For a moment I stared, unbelieving. And up in the mortal world the flowers blossomed and the birds sang and the humans stopped what they were doing and laughed with wonder and joy.

My Hades laughed too. Not cruelly or gloatingly, but with delight. And I laughed, and Melinoë's indignant little face screwed up and screamed louder.

Tentatively, he kissed her, then he put her to my breast, where she settled down and started to suckle.


End file.
